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Prediction of summer monsoon rainfall over India using the NCEP climate forecast system

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Abstract

The performance of a dynamical seasonal forecast system is evaluated for the prediction of summer monsoon rainfall over the Indian region during June to September (JJAS). The evaluation is based on the National Centre for Environmental Prediction’s (NCEP) climate forecast system (CFS) initialized during March, April and May and integrated for a period of 9 months with a 15 ensemble members for 25 years period from 1981 to 2005. The CFS’s hindcast climatology during JJAS of March (lag-3), April (lag-2) and May (lag-1) initial conditions show mostly an identical pattern of rainfall similar to that of verification climatology with the rainfall maxima (one over the west-coast of India and the other over the head Bay of Bengal region) well simulated. The pattern correlation between verification and forecast climatology over the global tropics and Indian monsoon region (IMR) bounded by 50°E–110°E and 10°S–35°N shows significant correlation coefficient (CCs). The skill of simulation of broad scale monsoon circulation index (Webster and Yang; WY index) is quite good in the CFS with highly significant CC between the observed and predicted by the CFS from the March, April and May forecasts. High skill in forecasting El Nino event is also noted for the CFS March, April and May initial conditions, whereas, the skill of the simulation of Indian Ocean Dipole is poor and is basically due to the poor skill of prediction of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies over the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. Over the IMR the skill of monsoon rainfall forecast during JJAS as measured by the spatial Anomaly CC between forecast rainfall anomaly and the observed rainfall anomaly during 1991, 1994, 1997 and 1998 is high (almost of the order of 0.6), whereas, during the year 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1989 the ACC is only around 0.3. By using lower and upper tropospheric forecast winds during JJAS over the regions of significant CCs as predictors for the All India Summer Monsoon Rainfall (AISMR; only the land stations of India during JJAS), the predicted mean AISMR with March, April and May initial conditions is found to be well correlated with actual AISMR and is found to provide skillful prediction. Thus, the calibrated CFS forecast could be used as a better tool for the real time prediction of AISMR.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to the Director General of Meteorology, India meteorological Department for the encouragement to carry out this joint work between IMD and NCEP. Authors are gratefully acknowledging the National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for providing the CFS hindcast data sets and the observational data for the verification purpose for a period of 25 years from 1981 to 2005. Authors are also thankful to Dr. Suranjana Saha, EMC, NCEP and Dr. Wanju Wang, NCEP for the valuable discussion about the NCEP CFS forecast system. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for very useful suggestions, which helped a lot to improve the quality of the paper.

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  1. India Meteorological Department (IMD), New Delhi, 110016, India

    D. R. Pattanaik

  2. Climate Prediction Center, National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/NWS/NOAA, 5200 Auth Road, Room 605, Camp Springs, MD, 20746, USA

    Arun Kumar

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  1. D. R. Pattanaik
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Correspondence to D. R. Pattanaik.

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Pattanaik, D.R., Kumar, A. Prediction of summer monsoon rainfall over India using the NCEP climate forecast system. Clim Dyn 34, 557–572 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0648-y

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